James II, detail of a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, c. 1685; in the National Portrait …

Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

James II was the second surviving son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. He was formally created duke of York in January 1644. During the English Civil Wars he lived at Oxford—from October 1642 until the city surrendered in June 1646. He was then removed by order of Parliament to St. James’s Palace, from which he escaped to the Netherlands in April 1648. He rejoined his mother in France in early 1649. Joining the French army in April 1652, he served in four campaigns under the great French general the vicomte de Turenne, who commended his courage and ability. When his brother Charles II concluded an alliance with Spain against France in 1656 he reluctantly changed sides, and he commanded the right wing of the Spanish army at the Battle of the Dunes in June 1658.

After the restoration of his brother Charles II to the English throne in 1660, James was created duke of Albany. He became lord high admiral and did much to maintain the efficiency and improve the organization of the navy. He also showed considerable interest in colonial ventures; it was on his initiative that New Amsterdam was seized from the Dutch in 1664 and renamed New York in his honour. He commanded the fleet in the opening campaigns of the Second and Third Dutch wars. This was to be his last taste of active military command until 1688.

In politics he was a strong supporter of the earl of Clarendon, whose daughter Anne he married in September 1660. Both before and after marriage he had the reputation of being as great a libertine as his brother. But in 1668 or 1669 he was admitted to the Roman Catholic Church, though on his brother’s insistence he continued to take the Anglican sacraments until 1672, and he attended Anglican services until 1676. Charles II also insisted that James’s daughters, Mary and Anne, be raised in the Protestant faith.

James’s conversion had little effect on his political views, which were already formed by his reverence for his dead father and his close association with the High Church party. James, in fact, was always more favourable to the Anglican church than was his Protestant brother. He welcomed the prospect of England’s reentering the European war on the side of the Dutch; and he consented to the marriage of his elder daughter, Mary, to the Protestant William of Orange in 1677. For most of his life James was the spokesman of the conservative Anglican courtiers, who believed that his views on monarchy and Parliament coincided with theirs, who found his formal and humourless nature more congenial than Charles’s slippery geniality, and who respected his frank acknowledgment of his religious beliefs.

In view of the queen’s childlessness, however, the conversion of the heir presumptive to the throne roused great alarm in the general public. James resigned all of his offices in 1673 rather than take an anti-Catholic oath imposed by the so-called Test Act and thus made his position known publicly. Later that year, his first wife having died, he gave further offense by marrying a Roman Catholic princess, Mary of Modena. By 1678 James’s Roman Catholicism had created a climate of hysteria in which the fabricated tale of a Popish Plot to assassinate Charles and put his brother on the throne was generally believed. From 1679 to 1681 three successive Parliaments strove to exclude James from the succession by statute. During this crisis James spent long periods in exile at Brussels and Edinburgh. But owing largely to his own tenacious defense of his rights, the exclusionists were defeated. In 1682 he returned to England and resumed the leadership of the Anglican Tories, whose power in local government was reestablished and increased by the “remodeling” of the borough corporations and the government of the counties in their favour. By 1684 James’s influence on state policy was paramount, and when he finally came to the throne on February 6, 1685, with very little overt opposition or even criticism, it seemed likely that the strong support of the Anglicans would make him one of the most powerful of the 17th-century British kings.

The new royalist Parliament that assembled in May 1685 voted James a large income, and there seemed to be no reason why he should not in time secure adequate toleration for his coreligionists. But unsuccessful rebellions led by the duke of Monmouth in England and the duke of Argyll in Scotland, in the summer of 1685, marked a turning point in his attitude. James’s distrust of his subjects, conceived in the turbulent 1670s, was at once sharpened. The rebellions were put down with great ferocity, the army was considerably increased, and the new regiments were granted to Roman Catholic officers who had had military experience abroad and whose loyalty was undoubted. This last act of policy provoked a quarrel between king and Parliament, which was prorogued in November 1685, never to meet again. In 1686 the division between the king and his former allies, the Anglican Tories, deepened. After a number of them had been replaced, the judges of King’s Bench in the collusive action Godden v. Hales found in favour of the king’s power to excuse individuals from the Test Oath; Roman Catholics were admitted to the Privy Council and subsequently to the high offices of state. A commission for ecclesiastical causes was established to administer James’s powers as supreme governor of the Anglican church, and its first act was to suspend Henry Compton, bishop of London, one of the most outspoken critics of royal policy.

In 1687 James intensified his Roman Catholic policy and dismissed his Anglican brothers-in-law the earl of Clarendon and the earl of Rochester. Magdalen College, Oxford, was given over for the use of Roman Catholics, and a papal nuncio was officially accredited to St. James’s Palace. In April James issued the so-called Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the laws against Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters alike; in July he dissolved Parliament, and in September he launched an intensive campaign to win over the Protestant dissenters and with their aid secure a new Parliament more amenable to his wishes.

What those wishes were is still not clear: some of his utterances suggest a genuine belief in religious toleration as a matter of principle; others point to the establishment of Roman Catholicism as the dominant if not the exclusivereligion of the state. This confusion may well reflect the state of James’s own mind, which undoubtedly deteriorated in the years 1687–88, and some of his assertions, accusations, and threats at this time verge on the insane.

The unexpected news that the queen was pregnant (November 1687), establishing the prospect of a Roman Catholic succession, had great effect on most Protestants; while a wholesale “remodeling” of borough corporations, lord lieutenancies, deputy lieutenancies, and magistracies that winter inflamed the majority of the nobility and gentry, whose political and social power suffered by it. Ever since the spring of 1687 many English leaders had been in touch with William of Orange, the husband of the heiress presumptive Mary and the champion of Protestant Europe against Louis XIV of France. The spark was touched off by James himself, when he reissued his Declaration of Indulgence on April 27, 1688, and on May 4 ordered it to be read in the churches. The archbishop of Canterbury and six of his bishops petitioned James to withdraw the order. Their petition was subsequently published, and James made the mistake of prosecuting its authors for seditious libel. Meanwhile, on June 10, in slightly mysterious circumstances, the queen gave birth to a son.

On June 30 the seven bishops were acquitted—a tremendous defeat for the government—and that same day seven leading Englishmen sent a letter inviting William of Orange to lead an army to England and call a free Parliament to arbitrate on the legitimacy of the prince of Wales. By September William’s intentions were obvious, but James declined Louis XIV’s offer of assistance for fear of the reaction in England; in any case he was confident in the ability of his forces to repel invasion. William sailed under cover of the general war that had by then broken out in Europe, evaded the English fleet, and landed at Brixham on Tor Bay on November 5 (November 15, New Style), 1688. In the subsequent “campaign,” James’s Protestant officers deserted to the enemy in such large numbers that he dared not commit the army to a pitched battle. This, together with the defection of his daughter Anne, finally shattered his nerve. He attempted to flee to France but was intercepted in Kent; 12 days later, on December 23, he was allowed to escape. On February 12, 1689, the Convention Parliament declared that James had abdicated and the next day offered the crown to William and Mary. The Scots Parliament followed suit in May.

In March 1689 James landed in Ireland, and a Parliament summoned to Dublin acknowledged him as king. But his Irish-French army was defeated by William at the Boyne (July 1 [July 11, New Style], 1690), and he returned to France. William’s generals reconquered Ireland the following year. In Ireland James had shown none of his former military ability, and he now aged rapidly, falling increasingly under the influence of his pietistic wife. He became daily more absorbed in his devotions, and his more aggressive supporters soon came to regard him as something of a liability. The Treaty of Rijswijk between England and France (1697) removed his last hopes of restoration.

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(1633-1701). James II served as king of Great Britain for only three years. He was forced to give up the crown because he supported the Roman Catholic church. His daughter and her husband became the new monarchs. This change of rulers was known as the Glorious Revolution.

(1633-1701). James II reigned as king of Great Britain for only three years, from 1685 to 1688. Like his grandfather,James I, and his father, Charles I, he firmly believed in the "divine right of kings." His overtly Roman Catholic policies alienated the majority of his subjects and led to his ouster in the Glorious Revolution.